Chaos in the court: James Gill

It would have been a mistake for Teddy Magee, following his conviction for sexual battery, to ask sheriff's deputies to call him a cab.

They might have figured out that Magee, who faces 20 years to life, planned to lam it out of there. Discretion was required. So he just strolled out the door and nobody suspected anything was amiss until he had melted into the crowd around Tulane and Broad.

Judge Ben Willard promptly jailed a trial witness he suspected of creating a diversion to assist the getaway. After such a fiasco in the courtroom he rules, Willard needed a diversion of his own.

Although Magee took the deputies by surprise, his attorney, J.C. Lawrence, said, "I told him not to leave. He did not listen." Defense attorneys do not normally need to tell convicted clients not to head for the exit. The next day Lawrence changed his tune. "He did not consult me on his big move," Lawrence said.

Magee certainly wasn't going to consult anyone else as he sat there after the guilty verdict came in and Willard was deciding whether to lock him up on the spot or set an appeal bond. Magee had been free pending trial and was wearing street clothes, but now that he was convicted, prudence obviously required one of the two deputies in the courtroom to keep close tabs on him.

Orleans Parish deputies cannot be expected to match the professionalism of, say, NOPD -- God help us -- but they have been remarkably remiss of late. Last year one of them, assigned to a suicide watch in the jail, deserted his post for four hours and returned to find the inmate had really meant it when he vowed to do himself in.

After Magee went missing, Sheriff Marlin Gusman said he would see whether the deputies violated any "policies or procedures." If they didn't, maybe it is time for some new policies or procedures.

But whatever prudence required at the Magee trial, it's what the judge requires that matters, and security was apparently not a prime consideration. Otherwise Willard would not have allowed both deputies to be otherwise engaged when Magee eased out.

Magee was convicted of what DA Leon Cannizzaro described as "one of the most brutal sex crimes that I have ever seen in my long career in this criminal justice system." The victim, Magee's former girlfriend, changed her story, either out of love or fear, and wound up testifying that she had consented to an assault that left her, according to Cannizzaro, "with massive trauma."

Magee was found guilty on the strength of medical testimony and incriminating phone calls he made from jail.

While Willard was conferring with attorneys after the verdict came in, the girlfriend, the sole defense witness, raised an unholy holler, and Magee rose from his chair to give her a hug just as Willard ordered her to leave the courtroom.

The couple must have presented a touching spectacle because nobody appears to have batted an eyelid when Magee accompanied the girlfriend to the anteroom where she had been told to calm down. No doubt to the astonishment of the entire courtroom, it turned out that Magee did not go along just to provide a shoulder to cry on.

Once through the courtroom door, he decided that was enough gallantry for one day and headed for the street. Who could have suspected that he would be thinking more of himself than a girlfriend in distress?

The girlfriend soon had another reason to holler, because Willard held her in contempt and had her hauled off to the cells.

Magee was apprehended Thursday and Willard let the girlfriend out, although not without imposing a punishment that verges on the cruel, if hardly unusual. He told her to get counseling.

Whether she was to blame for Magee's escape is hard to say. But we do know that Willard and his courtroom deputies were caught napping. If only Magee had asked for a cab.